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from Senensis - "from the very times of the apostles".

[TC-Alternate-list] Re: Francis Turretin, the heavenly witnesses, evidences and the Greek exemplaria
Steven Avery - October 5, 2010https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/...ns/topics/3571Small improvements and updates made to the original 2006 post. I also corresponded with at least two of the Turretin critics.

> ....Watch the emphasis on Cyprian, Contra Arium about Nicea (Athanasius-Arius), the Carthage documents, Jerome's explanation in the Vulgate Prologue, Fulgentius responding to the Arians, and doctrinal and internal and interpretative considerations (most of the article)

psaulm119 OK from what I can tell, the list of sources on page 290 looks much like the typical modern statements that one reads--not in many Greek and Latin mss, not in versions, not used in debates with anti-trinitarians where it would be expected if known. Then he goes to a comment in one of Jerome's prefaces, and then skips to Erasmus and later editions of the TR. Very interesting

StevenRight. Francis Turretin was totally informed. He even discusses the Vulgate Prologue which says how translators were unfaithful in dropping the heavenly witnesses. And he knew the ins and outs of the history of the Complutensian, Erasmus, Cajetan (one of the early critics who considered the verse doubtful) Codex Brittanica, etc.

Your quote was from Institutio Theologicae Elencticae has been translated in two ways, the second one has the benefit of at least pointing out the Latin word exemplaria (the Latin is further down in this post.)

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yet all the Greek copies have it, as Sixtus Senensis acknowledges: "they have been the words of never-doubted truth, and contained in all the Greek copies from the very times of the apostles" (Bibliotheca sancta [1575], 2:298) **

All the Greek witnesses (exemplaria) have it, as Sixtus Senensis recognizes: "The words always were of unquestioned truth, and are read in all Greek manuscripts from the time of the apostles themselves."

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Now based on these English translation (snippets) .. Francis Turretin has been a whipping boy of a number of modern authors.

Attacking Turretin:[textualcriticism] Re: 1 Timothy 3:16 in Codex Alexandrinus - March 30, 2006
Michael Marlowehttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/textualcriticism/message/1863 -
Turretin was a famous and well-respected theologian, and his Institutio was used as a textbook of theology in some Reformed seminaries up to the middle of the nineteenth century. But it's evident that this worthy author had no interest in investigating the possibility that a reading unconvenient to settled dogma could be the more authentic reading. False but "theologically correct" statements such as Turretin makes here set the tone for the time, and made it impossible for scholars to deal honestly with the evidence without fear of being tarred as heretics. Here is Turretin saying "all the Greek copies" have the Johannine Comma, when in fact *none* of the copies he could have examined in Switzerland contained the clause! And he quotes an Italian author who also maintained that the Comma is "in all the Greek copies." You see how utterly wrong and misleading some witnesses can be, and what a bad position we are in if we rely upon citations or testimony about readings from interested parties.

Textual Criticism in the Writings of Francis TurretinA Case Study in the History of Criticism and Dogmaby Michael Marlowe, May 2003http://www.bible-researcher.com/turretin-text.html
... We must suppose that he had little interest in discovering the true facts of the case when the common opinion of uninformed men served his purpose. It is very instructive to note this weakness in the work of such a learned man as Turretin.

[textualcriticism] Re: 1 Timothy 3:16 in Codex Alexandrinus - March 30, 2006
Daniel Buckhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/textualcriticism/message/1864What Turretin was exibiting was an appalling ignorance of the textual corpus (which could have been remedied by a careful perusal of the CA in Beza's TR)

Reformed Orthodoxy (2006)
Henk van den Belthttps://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/4582/04.pdf;sequence=16Turretin, Institutio II.xi.10. Cf. Turret in. Institutes 1. 115. Turretin depended on secondary sources for this judgment. For the Johannine Comma he refers to Sixtus Senensis (1520-1569) who wrote that the Comma was present in all the Greek copies from the times of the apostles. Cf. Sisto da Siena. Bibliotheca sancta, vol. 2, Frankfurt 1575. 298.On the Johannine Comma in Reformed orthodoxy cf. Muller, PRRD 2-2, 421-424.
James Whitehttp://www.aomin.org/aoblog/1996/06/...-plain-issues/https://web.archive.org/web/20161002033741/http://www.kjvonly.org/other/dr_theodore_letis_on_theonomy-L.htm

Now what are exemplaria ? It does not sound to me like simply "manuscripts" or "copies" in this context, definitely not all the copies for centuries. Note this usage .. looks just like our word exemplar.

Similarly Jerome refers to the Hesychius Greek OT as the exemplaria Alexandrina. While Sepulveda makes distinctions between codices and lectio and exemplaria, with the exemplaria Romans == libri archetype. So what you have is mediocre, questionable translation jumped on for the purpose of accusation. By writers who apparently do not know the very basics of the heavenly witnesses debate and what was actually written by Francis Turrretin.

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Francis Turretin was simply explaining that Jerome and the evidence points to the Greek exemplars down to the days of the apostles as having the heavenly witnesses. Exemplars from the times, at the times... not all copies (codices) since the times.

And as well the verse was in the Greek exemplars of his day, in the Greek editions approved (Complutensian Stephani, Hutteri, etc).

Here is the original Latin of the quote that is accused through translation

Notice the emphasis on what Jerome said about manuscripts, with the Mark ending. Jerome specifically tells us of the Greek manuscripts of his day having the heavenly witnesses, but its being dropped by unfaithful translators (and scribes, by context.)

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Notice that here Jerome is again talking of the ancient exemplars, very specifically, in the discussion of the Vulgate Prologue, where it is most apt.

[TC-Alternate-list] Francis Turretin, the heavenly witnesses, evidences and the Greek exemplaria - 10/07/2010 - Stevenhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/TC-Alt...t/message/3571
The most important person who looked to consider Turretin as writing questionably was Professor Henk van den Belt, quoted in the last post. However, Henk van de Belt was simply approaching this in a scholarly manner, en passant, the others who were quoted Turretin did not approach this as a scholarship matter to study ... it was seen more as anti-TR agiprop.

Reformed Orthodoxy (2006)Henk van den Belthttps://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/dsp...4582/16/04.pdfTurretin, Institution II.xi.10. Cf. Turret in. Institutes 1. 115. Turretin depended on secondary sources for this judgment. For the JohannineComma he refers to Sixtus Senensis (1520-1569) who wrote that the Commawas present in all the Greek copies from the times of the apostles. Cf.Sisto da Siena. Bibliotheca sancta, vol. 2, Frankfurt 1575. 298.

So I sent the fuller information to the Professor about the full background of Turretin on the heavenly witnesses and our discussion of the language he was using. (Mostly the url to the posts above with a quick summary of what Turretin covers in De tribus testibuscoelestibus.)

Thank you for your kind e-mail on Turretin. I'm sorry that I was to busy to respond earlier.
Your reference to the disputation on the issue is illuminating.
I agree that the reference to Sisto da Siena can be interpreted as referring to the original apostolic texts in stead of to all the Greek copies. THANKS!

Greetings,

Henk van den Belt
Assistant professor of Reformed Theology

=================================So I feel a real satisfaction in unravelling this attack against Francis Turretin, who was a true Reformation giant being portrayed as a textual simpleton. All of which had puzzled me for a while when I had first seen it on the textual criticism list in 2006 some years back in a post by Michael Marlowe.

Granted, the Professor's comment is still a bit nuanced "can beinterpreted"however all in all it is rather strong with"illuminating".. and a hearty thanks. All of which I see as a confirmation of the research project. My own conviction is now even more sure. Francis Turretin was fully aware of the textual backdrop of the extant Greek manuscripts, as is very clear in the major section in De tribus testibus coelestibus.

And Francis Turretin had been very unfairly attacked by men of little insight like James White "Turretin is obviously in error". We also had Michael Marlowe's barrage in an email and an article. "The examination of practically any Greek manuscript would have revealed to Turretin that the statement of Sixtus Senensis regarding 1 John 5:7 is simply untrue" which Marlowe wrote was only because of "pressure on scholars to adhere to the TR"! "special-pleading on its (TR)behalf" .. "appalling" ... "utterly wrong and misleading" ... all this verbiage against Turretin based on superficial research into Turretin's writings and misunderstanding the context of one quote !

Ironically, Michael Marlowe then went a step further, and used his own error in analysis to claim that the many examiners of Codex Alexandrinus who had seen a stroke in the text (the list is long and distinguished) would have been similarly biased, and saw the OS stroke "as mostly a figment of theological correctness". All this based on Marlowe's not knowing the strength of Turretin's writing! Which I had come across in my heavenly witnesses study.

The question is real, though, in a sense.

When there is a political agenda, research and analysis will suffer.
Here the agenda was against the Received Text. Shalom,Steven AveryQueens, NY

"Not 1 Jn. 5:7, for although some formerly called it into question and heretics now do, yet all the Greek copies have it, as Sixtus Senensis acknowledges: “they have been the words of never-doubted truth, and contained in all the Greek copies from the very times of the apostles” (Bibliotheca sancta [1575], 2:298)."

What he's referring to is Sixtus Senensis' quote referring to the Greek copies that were "from the very times of the apostles". Support for this would include Jerome's Preface (which has mistakenly been assumed to be a later 9th century addition, despite being included in a 5th century Vulgate manuscript).

Turretin obviously knew that all Greek manuscripts didn't have it. He even wrote a whole treatise on the comma and discusses the manuscript evidence for the comma. Even if he was referring to Greek printed editions, he obviously knew that it wasn't in "all" of them either, since the first 2 editions of Erasmus didn't have it.

Folks have misunderstood what Turretin meant in that phrase and made him sound like he didn't know what he was talking about. His book of disputations (which included various treatises on certain topics) was never translated and so those who have an axe to grind regarding the comma jump on the way he worded that sentence in the Institutes to make him sound ignorant of the data.

In his treatise, Turretin suspects that the Arians corrupted a bunch of manuscripts, and thus that is why a large portion of the extant manuscript evidence excludes the comma.

Peter Gurry
William Sandell I’ll take your word for it that Turretin knew of MSS that didn’t have it, but I confess I don’t know how else to read his remark that I mentioned. In any case, I have no ax to grind. The point stands that our data on that text is today different from what it was in the 17th century

One of the few contras who engage the Turretin section is Grantley McDonald. However, only in a one-dimensional way. From Raising the ghost of Arius : Erasmus, the Johannine comma and religious difference in early modern Europe.

Within the Calvinist discourse, the question of the comma was never far from the spectre of Arianism. In his disputation on the three heavenly witnesses (first published 1661), Francois Turrettini (1623-1687) reviewed the manuscript evidence for the passage. “Erasmus,” Turrettini narrated, “declares that [the comma] is found in the very ancient British Codex, which he considered so authoritative that he restored this verse, omitted from his previous editions, in the later editions, which he revised with utmost care, as he himself says.” If the comma is missing from other manuscripts, this is to be attributed to the wicked fraud of the Arians, who removed it.175 It is perhaps for this reason that the comma is cited not once, but twice in the footnotes of the Westminster catechism (1646).176